Durvena Cabina, Contos da Casa do Lobo, Portugal, Rasga, cassette (2024)
It’s a pity this album, the second by Portuguese act Durvena Cabina, has come out quite late in 2024 as (for me anyway) it’s certainly a contender for Album of the Year in 2024: inspired by the folklore and legends of northern Portugal, and using samples of the folk music of this area, “Contos da Casa do Lobo” (in English: “Tales of the House of the Wolf”) lays out an extraordinary sonic tapestry of hilly and mountainous landscapes, cold rainy winters and peoples of Celtic, Iberian and other mysterious origins whose beliefs revolved around human contacts with otherworldly beings both benevolent and maleficent. I am not at all familiar with Durvena Cabina – I only heard of this act very recently – but the artist behind DC also runs a black metal project, Sokushinbutsu. Durvena Cabina’s music here embraces black metal as one of several inspirations and core elements that include neofolk, psychedelia, ambient and musique concrète in a setting of long droning shamanic freeform ritual pieces, each and every one of which is highly absorbing, hypnotic and magical.
Although the album is divided into six tracks, it’s best heard as one complete unit from the first track to the last, or even with the tracks mixed – though individual tracks, even the shorter ones like “Solstício”, are enchanting enough that you’ll be quickly drawn deep into the mysterious dimensions behind them. Each track reveals a lush soundscape that can contain unexpected power and menace as well as charming beauty and sometimes plaintive melancholy. Tales of wolves and their ability to inflict disease and suffering through their evil gaze, and of other hostile beings and spirits, often magnified through long periods of isolation and cabin fever during inhospitable weather, come to terrifying life in tracks like “Caí no Poço, Morri no Campo”, a spooky ambient work of ghost voices and effects made even more chilling by constant background metal-sawing noise drone. Samples of folk chanting are given a sinister edge through distortion and a wave of harsh BM noise guitar drone accompanied by eerie fragments of flute melody and space ambient effects in “Ela que chamou o Fumo”. Closing track “Luna” starts off as the most soothing and song-like piece, though it has the mood and atmosphere of a keening elegy, but the simmering chaos of the Otherworld and its denizens is never far away.
A beautiful and enthralling album of mystery, magic and menace, this particular collection in sonic form of dark folk tales is a unique achievement indeed.